This blog details some of my thoughts and aspirations relating to application packaging, compatibility and the ongoing management of applications on desktop, server and cloud platforms. I have a strong focus on the Windows desktop space, but as we progress into more and more cloud based application management, we will definitely see more posts on getting applications working
in the cloud.

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Patch Tuesday: March 8th 2011

With this Microsoft Patch Tuesday update, we see a relatively small set of updates in comparison to those lists of updates released by Microsoft for the month of January and February. In total there are three Microsoft Security Updates with the following rating; 1 Critical, and 2 rated Important. This is a small update from Microsoft and the potential impact for the updates is likely to be very small.

As part of the Patch Tuesday Security Update analysis performed by the ChangeBASE AOK team, we have seen very little cause for potential compatibility issues; in fact, this patch update raised no issues against our sample database.

Given the nature of the changes and updates included in each of these patches, most systems will require a reboot to successfully implement any and all of the patches and updates released in this March Patch Tuesday release cycle.

As part of the testing Summary for this March 2011 Patch Tuesday update, here is a quick snap-shot the AOK Summary results page generated from these 3 Plugins on a small sample database:

This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability in DirectShow and one privately reported vulnerability in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. The more severe of these vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Microsoft Digital Video Recording (.dvr-ms) file. In all cases, a user cannot be forced to open the file; for an attack to be successful, a user must be convinced to do so.

This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft Groove that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a legitimate Groove-related file that is located in the same network directory as a specially crafted library file. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Windows Remote Desktop Client. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a legitimate Remote Desktop configuration (.rdp) file located in the same network folder as a specially crafted library file. For an attack to be successful, a user must visit an untrusted remote file system location or WebDAV share and open a document from this location that is then loaded by a vulnerable application.

Payload

2k3mstsc.exe, 2k3mstscax.dll

Impact

Important - Remote Code Execution

*All results are based on an AOK Application Compatibility Lab’s test portfolio of over 1,000 applications.